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Meaning and Purpose, written by Kenneth Walker, was first published in September 1944 by Jonathan Cape, London, and republished by Pelican Books in 1950.. The purpose of the book, as stated in the preface, was "... to examine critically those scientific theories of the last hundred years which have exerted a strong influence on our thinking, not so much for the purpose of assessing their worth ...
Man's Search for Meaning is a 1946 book by Viktor Frankl chronicling his experiences as a prisoner in Nazi concentration camps during World War II, and describing his psychotherapeutic method, which involved identifying a purpose to each person's life through one of three ways: the completion of tasks, caring for another person, or finding meaning by facing suffering with dignity.
Purpose in life and meaning in life constructs appeared in Frankl's logotherapy writings with relation to existential vacuum and will to meaning, as well as others who have theorized about and defined positive psychological functioning. Frankl observed that it may be psychologically damaging when a person's search for meaning is blocked.
Viktor Emil Frankl (26 March 1905 – 2 September 1997) [1] was an Austrian neurologist, psychologist, philosopher, and Holocaust survivor, [2] who founded logotherapy, a school of psychotherapy that describes a search for a life's meaning as the central human motivational force. [3]
The first English use of the expression "meaning of life" appears in Thomas Carlyle's Sartor Resartus (1833–1834), book II chapter IX, "The Everlasting Yea". [1]Our Life is compassed round with Necessity; yet is the meaning of Life itself no other than Freedom, than Voluntary Force: thus have we a warfare; in the beginning, especially, a hard-fought battle.
Meaning is also known as purpose, and answers the question of "why?" Discovering a clear "why" puts everything into context from work to relationships to other parts of life. [26] Finding meaning is learning that there is something greater than oneself. Working with meaning drives people to continue striving for a desirable goal. Accomplishments
Absurdism is the philosophical thesis that life, or the world in general, is absurd. There is wide agreement that the term "absurd" implies a lack of meaning or purpose but there is also significant dispute concerning its exact definition and various versions have been suggested.
Kegan wrote: "Human being is meaning making. For the human, what evolving amounts to is the evolving of systems of meaning; the business of organisms is to organize, as Perry (1970) says." [12] The term "meaning-making" has also been used by psychologists influenced by George Kelly's personal construct theory. [13]